It concerns a young British teacher, John (Gary Bond), who is kind of in servitude--teachers have to pay a sort of bond for their jobs, to prevent them from abandoning the job since the outback locations are pretty desolate and isolating. During the Christmas break from school, John tries to travel home to spend time with his girlfriend, but since he has no substantial money, ends up stranded in a small town nicknamed the Yabba, where he had planned to travel on to Sydney. In Yabba, he meets several locals here, including a policeman (Chips Rafferty) who buys him drinks then introduces him to a gambling game, an English doctor with shady methods who finds the Aussies are less discerning about his credentials (Pleasance), and a man who buys him a drink (Al Thomas) and takes him home where John and he spend time with his friends (including Thompson), and, other than John, ignores his wife (Sylvia Kay, the director's wife at the time).
At first John does try halfheartedly to get home, but his degeneration into drinking, gambling, and other male pursuits leads to a week of near-insanity. At the end of it John rejoins "civilized society" but we question what has changed in him now.
